


The Meaning of Flowers

by Elysya



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Medieval, Fantasy, Happy Ending, Knight!Shiro, M/M, Pining, because we're in the middle ages but there is no homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-15
Updated: 2018-08-15
Packaged: 2019-06-27 19:39:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15692067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elysya/pseuds/Elysya
Summary: After years of peace, the kingdom of Altea is under attack, but they have little defenses and no time to prepare; which is why Keith decides he has to protect his kingdom as future heir, and the only one he trusts to teach him how is his Captain of the Guards and close friend, Shiro.Or, a lot of pining with a side of protectiveness and real, old-fashioned swords.





	The Meaning of Flowers

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this OS for my best friend's birthday in July, she wanted me to add a reference to one of our favorite Disney movies (guess where it is lol) and I just liked how it came out so I thought, what the hell? Let's publish this.
> 
> I have so much stuff that I've written for this fandom so hopefully I'll post more?? Who knows?? Anyhow these two dorks really inspire me. 
> 
> This is unbeta'd, every mistake is my own.

Birds chirped on the tall trees of the Castle’s garden, announcing the beginning of a new day; two figures went back and forth, sparring with ease as their armors glistened under the sun of an early autumn morning.

As they moved, their feet crunched dry levees that had fallen during the first weeks of the season and now created a carpet on the tones of reds and yellows that made it impossible to not be heard, and their swift attacks made clouds of dirt rise up to the sky.

Even as the trees grew bare and animals seeked shelter, the life inside the Castle didn’t have time to stop and rest during the cold times of the year, so the guards were always training, especially after the Queen had announced that she had to leave for a diplomatic mission in order to conceal threats from a nearby kingdom.

She had returned with fire in her eyes and the warning of staying sharp and ready for battle, so they obeyed. 

As the men in white and golden kept dancing around each other, someone reached them; the late King’s protégè was holding his cape close to himself as he tried no to shiver: inside, the Castle had been warm and inviting, nothing like the harsh cold that turned his cheeks red.

He stopped at a safe distance and watched as the guards practiced their swordsmanship.

Usually, he liked to keep to himself, watching from the window in his room whenever the soldiers happened to be sparring outside. He was content to watch, or so he told himself: truthfully, his hands hitched to hold a proper sword and get inside one of the standard armours, so beautiful and out of reach.

The taller of the two ducked an attack from their partner, then launched himself forward until he hit the other on the shoulder with the blunt edge of his sword. The duel was now over, and the opponents quickly got rid of their helmets. 

“You lasted way longer that I had expected,” Shiro, the Captain of the guards, praised the other man with a pat on his back. “We’ll try again after supper, remember to balance your strikes and be careful not to leave any opening, especially on your legs,” he advised before he sent the young cadet on his way back to guarding the palace entrance.

“Is something the matter, my Lord?” Shiro addressed his superior with reverence, half-panting thanks to the physical exercise. 

“You can drop the act, no one is listening,” Keith answered, his deep red hood now left to the wind. 

Shiro smiled to himself, ducking his head.

It had been almost five years since he first got assigned the protection of the royal family, he had quickly outranked all those before him and - thanks to missions that had ended badly and his own skills - had quickly reached the highest honor a soldier of the Altean Kingdom could have hoped for: guarding the Queen and Lord personally.

In that time, he had grown closer to his masters, particularly so when it came to the young lord, but still they had to keep up a more formal behaviour when someone else was nearby; other people may deem their friendship a tad inconvenient. 

“Alright Keith, what’s wrong?” He still got a shiver down his spine whenever he addressed him in such a familiar way, moreover Keith had filled in during the past years, thanks to several months of training with practice swords, a growth spurt and regular walks to the village and back, which made him look like an actual twenty years old, instead of the skinny version of a boy he appeared to be up until he had turned eighteen.

It didn’t get past Shiro’s notice.

“I want you to train me,” he explained, his head held high.

“I already train you,” Shiro replied, confused, as he put his sword back at its place on his belt.

“No, I want you to train me to fight on the battlefield. I’m enlisting.”

Shiro blinked twice, trying to clear the fog out of his eyes. “Enlisting for what?”

Keith huffed, clearly annoyed with the act his friend was putting on; they both knew that a war was close, and it was no secret that the Galra Kingdom had a strong army, whereas they had never invested severely on military training.

They were going to need all the help they could get, and Keith was good at fencing, it wouldn’t be a problem to teach him the rules of battle - Shiro was convinced he would be able to take on a Galra soldier without any help as he was - and it would be an honor to fight alongside his Lord and master.

Still, it was Keith, and the idea of him putting himself in danger so deliberately made Shiro cringe inside.

“We barely have half a decent army, our soldiers are not ready for combat. Altea has been a peaceful kingdom for over twenty years,” Keith listed. “I want to help.”

“Are you sure?”

“Allura is going to fight, why can’t I?”

A valid point. Plus, seeing them both on the battlefield would increase the moral immensely. Shiro couldn’t find reasons to deny him except his own selfish need to keep Keith safe.

He knew it wasn’t enough.

“We start tomorrow.”

***

So their routine changed.

Early in the mornings, Keith would still get dressed and then join Queen Allura and her teacher, master Coran, for breakfast in the smaller dining room while Shiro arrived half an hour later to let them eat in peace without him lurking behind the seats.

After that, Shiro would lead Keith to meetings and lessons or whatever was in program for his morning and they would find the time to chat to and from the various locations the young Lord was supposed to visit.

Before supper, they spared for an hour with heavy combat swords that hadn’t been sharpened yet. After that, it was back to the more classical lessons such as horse riding, practicing with bow and arrow, and when they were done Keith was to join the Queen for dinner.

Sometimes, before the day went too dark, Keith liked to go to the library and read for a few hours - encouraging Shiro to do the same, not just stand still and watch him as he devoured book after book, “It makes me feel unease.”

(“You are still watching me,” Keith said the night before he asked to take extra sparring lessons.

Shiro couldn’t deny he had been stuck on the same page for more than ten minutes now, his gaze kept flickering to Keith’s hair which now reached his neck in a complicated mass of black.

It was incredibly endearing.

“Do you still find it to be distressing, me looking at you?”

It had been a bit of a debacle during the early days, when Keith wasn’t used to someone watching over hi every minute and blushed, asking Shiro to leave rooms and fetch him objects just so he could have a few seconds of privacy.

Keith had barely raised his eyes enough to look his friend in the face, he had tried to hide his smirk behind the cover of his book and decided, “No, I just wanted to know if that book was worth wasting my time over, and if you don’t read it I’ll never know.”)

But lately they often found themselves sparring even at midnight under the cloak of night, when everyone was fast asleep, leaving little to no time for sitting down with a good book. 

They knew the day of the battle was close, they needed to sleep in order to be alert enough and yet Shiro tried to dether their departure for one minute longer each night so he could prepare himself for the time when Keith would ultimately join the ranks. 

One day, after the end of their night session, Keith approached him as he cleaned his face from sweat with the sleeves of his shirt - a plain white cotton one he usually wore in warmer days - and painting as he tried to tell him, “I have enlisted today, to officially fight in the army. Do you think I’m ready?” He spoke with uncertainty, eyes downcast as if meeting Shiro’s judgment would break him once and for all. And maybe it would have, the Captain had little understanding of how important he was to the young Lord.

Keith remained still, a feet away from Shiro and holding his breath as he waited for an answer. 

“I think,” Shiro replied, much as it pained him to say it, “That you are going to make a wonderful addiction to our lines.” He put his left hand on Keith’s shoulder for good measure, which made the younger boy look up in wonder as the stars reflected in his eyes and his smile widened.

“Really?”

“Of course, it would be bad form to lie to His Royal Highness,” he teased.

Keith nodded, pleased with himself. After Shiro retrieved his hand with a finale squeeze, they both bowed slightly in sign of farewell.

“Thank you, Takashi.”

It was the first time Keith had uttered his first name, Shiro wasn’t even sure he would have remembered it given how they had only spoken it once on the day of his greetings with the royal family, but the fact that he had was making his heart beat faster.

Perhaps it was the exaltation of the moment, the way Lord Keith’s face looked under the moonlight or the knowledge that they were spending what could have been their last times together that led to Shiro asking, “Would you allow me to accompany you to the Castle’s gate?”

Keith was confused by the request, but not displeased if the way he tilted his head and smiled gently was any indication.

“I mean-” Shiro stuttered, “It is late and I fear for your safety since the… Galra forces are so close to the kingdom.”

Keith looked like he wanted to buy that poor excuse for an explanation, for he said, “King Zarkon was never one to play by the rules, I suppose. No one can say he’s not planning an ambush right now.”

“Right.”

Shiro lowered his head, thankful for the intervention but still ashamed of his blabbing. He thought he was able to manage whatever feeling was starting to overcome him every time he notice one more quirk in Keith’s personality, but apparently increasing the time they spent together was not helping.

Nevertheless, the Lord was happy to follow his guardian as they made their way through the garden. Shiro occupied himself by looking at the freshly bloomed Violets, their petals almost shining under the silver light reflected by the full moon.

He carelessly took one out of the bush they had bloomed in, and started twirling it around his finger.

During the short walk to the gates he refrained himself from looking behind his shoulders; he was sure Keith would be following, and at the same time he believed one last look at him would be enough to finally make him fall on his knees and beg that he kept himself safe inside the castle’s walls.

They had known each other for a long time now, and Shiro had more than grown fond of him, so much so that it was hard to imagine a life in which his duties did not include the protection of young Queen Allura’s protégè, without his rare but brisk laugh and his unmatchable wit to help him fill his days.

A life without Keith would have been nothing but a pale comparison to the one he was currently living. The knowledge struck him like lightning.

When they reached the gates and it was officially time to say goodbye, no excuses left to spend a few seconds more in Keith’s company, Shiro was still half-way lost in his mind and he didn’t register the blush on the other man’s cheeks, or the way he was clearly readying himself to say something.

The Lord’s attention was captured by the flower in Shiro’s hand, though, and whatever was meant to be said remained locked up.

“Oh, that’s nice,” he noticed. 

“It is,” Shiro agreed. He didn’t know what possessed him to put his hand forward and offer it to Keith with the smallest of whispers, “Keep it.”

Keith’s eyes grew incredibly wide. “I just…”

“I insist. As a lucky charm?”

Keith didn’t argue anymore, he just took the flower and tucked its stem behind his ear. “Goodnight then.”

While the young Lord turned around and left to retire in his chambers, Shiro remembered one time talking to the Queen as she attended her garden a few days before: she was talking to him about her flowers and he was listening with fascination.

_ “See, Shiro? These flowers are really useful in order to cure heart diseases,” she had said. _

_ He had snorted. _

_ “What’s so funny?” She had admonished him playfully. _

_ “It’s just that you told me all about the romantic and meaningful flowers you planted and these ones… are they really only medical herbs?” _

_ “Well,” Allura had said, caressing one of the blossoms, “If you want to look at the most sentimental meaning they also represent an ache of the heart, the kind one feels when one loves another and wants true love to blossom in their sweethearts’ spirit as well, for example.” She had blinked and teasingly asked, “Anyone you want to fall in love with you, Shiro?” _

_ He glanced far away to the other side of the garden, where Keith was training by himself with the bow. _

He had smiled bashfully and said nothing at the time, but the memory made him pause as he realized what he had unconsciously done.

He started to walk his way to his chambers, hoping deeply Allura wouldn’t see Keith with the flower and inform him of what had happened. Meanwhile, he asked himself if, had the memory surfaced earlier in his mind, it would have stopped him from gifting the flower to Keith.

***

The next morning a servant made his way to Keith’s chambers in order to dress him up for the day, when the task was complete the Lord looked at his desk where he had put the small Violet gifter to him the night before, promising himself to put it between the pages of a book - maybe the one Shiro had gifted him for his seventeenth birthday - to make sure it wouldn’t spoil.

He stared at the flower for a good minute before he decided to tuck it in the pocket of his jacket, just above his heart. 

Once he reached the dining room and sat in front of his sister, the nerves and anxiety about telling her he was to fight for the kingdom alongside her were starting to make themselves known. He gulped down his own saliva, cleaned the palms of his hand on his trousers and breathed deeply.

“Is something the matter?” she asked.

“Where is Coran?”

Allura stopped her movements, raising one eyebrow. “Is that what worried you so much?” She eyed her brother carefully, waiting for a sign that would let her know his answer before he started to speak.

Keith cleared his throat. “Just curious.”

“He is running a bit late, he was kept awake yesterday by suspicious sounds of swords. He fears an attack.” She sent him a look that made him understand she knew the exact truth of what had went down the night before. “I know it wasn’t, but you know how he can be.”

“Speaking of, I have something to tell you. About me and Shiro sparring lat night,” he started. 

“Yes, Shiro always tells me how much you have improved, during the rare times I am allowed to talk to him.”

Keith shook his head. “What do you mean?”

Allura shrugged, a smug smile on her face that she poorly tried to hide behind a cup of tea. “I mean you spend an awful lot of time together. Don’t you think? I barely even see you anymore,” she admitted.

“I am sorry, sister.”

Allura smirked, picking up a biscuit from the tray in front of her. “Nothing to be sorry for, brother. I didn’t mean it in a bad way, just stating the obvious.”

“There is something I did and I fear you might not approve,” he breathed out after a pregnant pause.

Allura snorted. “What? Did you broke the vase Aunt Gloria brought us?”

Keith swallowed on thin air again. “No. I enlisted. I’m officially a soldier.”

Allura’s cup dropped to the floor, just in time for Shiro to enter the room and notice the Queen’s shocked expression. He bent down to retrieve the broken teacup, putting the pieces back on the table so a servant could pick them up and clean. 

He moved behind the Queen’s chair and took the liberty of putting both hands on her shoulders. “What happened, Your Majesty?”

His voice acted as a trigger; in no time Allura was standing next to her Captain of the Guards, and even if the difference in heights was noticeable, her face alone made everyone understand she was the one to hold the power in the room.

“You knew,” she whispered. “You knew about this?” Her voice was growing thinner and thinner as she tried to conceal her tears. “My brother, the only heir, going to fight in a barbaric war with no meaning nor purpose. You knew and you didn’t stop him?”

“On what grounds? I--”

“You could have come to me, you could have said something!”

“I’m still here,” Keith replied.

Allura turned around forcefully, shoving Shiro out of her way to stare at her brother, “I know you are, it does not make me any less angry. You could have consulted me first.”

Keith crossed his arms in front of his chest, “You would have prevented me from doing it.”

“Exactly,” she replied with a deadly look in her eyes. She turned around, stared at Shiro once again and informed him, “I hope for your sake, and the sake of the whole kingdom, that you will protect him.” 

They didn’t have time to argue further: a servant interrupted them, his breath heavy as he announced, “Your Majesty, the’re here. Zarkon and his army, they’re at the walls outside the city.”

“Move the army outside the town’s walls, wait for me.”

***

Allura quickly prepared herself to join the rest of the army in front of the kingdom’s gates; her white horse was almost trembling with tension under her, his hovees marking the earth nervously as if he had sensed the attack to come.

She looked at the lines in front of her, as Shiro took her rightful place by her side and Keith stood along with the other cavaliers at the far end of the formation. 

“I know how you feel,” Shiro said beside her, catching her gaze. “I, too, didn’t want him to go through with this, but if that’s what he wants I can barely stop him, you know how he is.”

“Yes,” Allura agreed. “I do know.”

Shiro sighed deeply. “What do we do?” He looked ahead, at the massive army waiting for their King’s signal.

“What we prepared to do,” Allura raised her sword to the sky.

From the walls, a sound of horns shook the tensions and in a few seconds the troupes moved, thousands of swords were yielded at the same time, the soldiers ran as fast as they could to keep up with the cavaliers who made sure their horses were galloping at full speed. 

Allura went straight for Zarkon, guiding her horse o that they may have a fair fight or the equivalent of such a thing, since fighting didn’t account for fairness or justice; Shiro turned right, heading for the far left group of cavaliers.

Meanwhile, Keith was moving along towards certain death, his sword held high as he made Galran after Galran fall from their horse with quick movements of his blade. Shiro could see him as he approached, fighting with all his might and appling every single one of his lessons to combat.

In a deep, buried part of his soul, he was proud to see Keith have the chance to prove himself. 

While he was speeding in his Lord’s direction, trying to fend off any foe that was trying to throw him on the ground, he noticed one man on a black horse and purple armour slide behind Keith, his sword ready to strike.

Shiro’s eyes widened, his heart stopped beating for a moment as his brain kept telling him, “ _ This is it. You lost him because you couldn’t deny him. _ ”

At the last expected moment, though, Keith managed to defeat the soldier he was currently fighting against, just in time to turn around and slice through the other offender’s chest, making him hit the ground hard.

Shiro got to his side mere seconds later, everything had happened in and instant and he was still shocked when Keith asked, “What are you doing here?”

“You’re my Lord, you’re in distress. I’m here to help,” Shiro explained, his horse halting to a stop while he hit another man on his shoulder.

“Yes, I am your Lord,” Keith agreed, another quick movement of his weapon. “I am in distress,” he continued, ducking an attack. “And I can handle it.”

“I know but-”

Seeing that his road was clear, Keith ws about to start marching again until he reached Zarkon or defeated everyone next to him, but he had to stop when he heard a cry coming from his left side where Shiro stood. 

He turned around and saw nothing but the Captain’s horse, rebelling against the hold of a Galran soldier who was trying to gain control of him.

Keith wasted no time before he knocked the man unconscious, then he started looking for Shiro frantically, screaming his name in fear that he had fallen off and would soon be crushed under the hooves of their horses.

He looked for a few minutes before he saw his friend’s body, lying incredibly still on the ground, just like he had feared. He turned his horse around, grabbed Shiro’s body and raised him up on the steed so he could bring him back to the castle; he didn’t even have the time to focus on Shiro’s conditions before they raced against the flow toward the town.

They needed a physician. As soon as humanly possible.

***

When Shiro woke up, it was to an unimaginable amount of pain starting from his head and developing in his right arm, he tried to scratch the bridge of his nose which was causing him some minor discomfort but nothing happened.

He looked down and the first thing he saw was the empty space beside his hip where his right arm should have been, replaced by nothing but a band-aid that covered his upper arm and grew onto his shoulder.

He grimaced and put his head back on the flat pillow it had been resting on, forcing the tears that were threatening to spill from his eyes to stay still by sheer force of will, to no use. Soon his cheeks turned damp, and then it was his pillow’s turn.

He didn’t know where he was, didn’t know how the battle had ended or how long had passed. He didn’t know if he actually cared about all those things, not when he was mourning the loss of the most important part of his body, the one that allowed him to do his job and do it right. 

Someone else entered the room, Shiro could hear the cracking of a old wooden door and he tried to obtain some form of decency by passing his left hand - his only hand - on his face. He knew it was not that useful, but it still made him feel like he had accomplished something.

The one who sat on a chair not far from his bed where - allegedly - he had been recovering, was none other than Keith, still in his armour and looking far too tired to even speak.

He had a few bandages on his face, one cut his upper lip, one on his eyebrow. A dark shade of purple colored his right eye and when he reached for Shiro’s form with trembling hands, not sure if it was appropriate to touch him, Shiro noticed his bruised knuckles.

“Keith,” he whispered, almost patronizing.

“You’re awake,” he answered, passing his hand through Shiro’s bangs to clean them out of his sweating forehead.

His mouth tasted like sand, and he wanted nothing more than to stand up and leave but he doubted his headache would have let him. He tried anyway, only to be stopped by two gentle hands pushing him back on the mattress. 

“No, lay down,” Keith ordered.

“What happened?”

Keith sighed. “We won. The war is not over, Zarkon will be back when his army is restored but for now, it’s over.” 

Shiro breathed deeply in relief, closing his eyes.

He didn’t prompt anything, but Keith continued anyway, “After I brought you here, I left to join the battlefield again. I almost didn’t make it, but Allura had my backs. There were… a lot of casualties, though.”

“We need a new army. Stronger, better trained. It’s of the utmost importance that we…” Shiro started, trying to occupy his mind with futile talks of duties and responsibilities to pretend like his life wasn’t on the verge of collapse for a stupid error he made in combat.

He vaguely remembered fighting alongside Keith, trying to protect him when he felt someone attacking him from behind. He hadn’t been careful enough of his own stability, too mindful of Keith to notice the treath. He silently cursed himself for being so careless.

“No, you don’t need to do anything.”

There it was.

“You need to heal, and wait, and then we can talk about your future duties,” Keith said, putting a hand on his right shoulder as if it was nothing to be shamed for, a Captain of the Guards with no useful arm to account for. “You’ve been sleeping for two days now, I was afraid you would never come back to me.”

Shiro blinked, he tried to focus on the here and now and the soft way in which Keith was smiling down at him. He looked relieved, happy in the easy tilt of his lips. Then he remembered something he had noticed before but to which he hadn’t given the proper attention: Keith was still in his armour.

The red embellishments on his chest plate were almost completely ruined, his helmet laid on the floor close to Shiro’s bed and Keith himself clearly hadn’t had much sleep in the past two days.

“Have you returned to the castle at all?” Shiro asked.

Keith blushed slightly, but he answered more firmly and rationally than he had ever done, “Of course not! What did you expect, for me to leave you here with no defense and highly feverish?”

“I just-- I would have never thought you’d do such a thing for me,” Shiro answered honestly.

Keith froze, his face lost the hard lines it had shown a few moments before in his fit of anger and he cleared his throat. He looked like he was thinking really hard about what he was supposed to say next.

“Allura came to visit you, we talked and everything is fine. She said she can see I’ll make a great addition to the cavalry,” he said, eyes piercing through Shiro’s so hard he felt the need to avert his gaze.

“She brought me the violet you had picked for me, said she found it in my room.”

Shiro stiffed at the notion.

“She asked who had brought it to me, but I didn’t tell her, don’t worry. Though she did say what the flower meant.”

Shiro was afraid to speak, the air in the room was too tense and filled with wonder and he still hadn’t regained the ability to say more than a few sentences at a time, his brain didn’t want to cooperate with his body and it annoyed him to exhaustion.

“Did you know what it meant? When you gave it to me?” Keith asked finally, his hands worrying between themselves.

Shiro finally looked back at him, feeling like he owed it to Keith to say the truth. “Yes.” He had known, even if it wasn’t his intention to reveal his feeling in a manner so bold.

Keith’s eyes felt like they were sparkling, one of his hands was resting on the mattress, close enough to feel the other’s warmth but not touching him; then he uttered one small, but meaningful word, “Good.”

***

Two years later, Shiro had grown used to life without his left arm. He didn’t have the duties he used to have, and he was surely still struggling with his own head but he fought well enough with his left and sharing the burdens with Keith made everything much easier.

What he still wasn’t accustomed to was life as a part of the Royal Family, being looked after and cared for by so many people he used to call his equals not two weeks earlier.

Another thing he wasn’t still used to, were the enormous capes ad complicated suits he had to wear, more restricting than his old armour. 

He looked at the silver band on his ring finger and smiled, as he had started to do ever since Keith had given it to him.

Obviously, it wasn’t custom for a man to wear a wedding ring, but they had to make do somehow, not having any physical proof of their union wasn’t something they were going to stand for.

The second best occupation Shiro had developed, was looking at the way Keith’s ring glommed on his finger as he pointed directions on maps and programmed attacks. 

Ever since Shiro had recovered, Allura and him had seen it fit to pass the role of Captain of the Guards down to Keith, who at first had refused it - that was the exact reason of most of their first arguments as partners, it took Shiro a while to make Keith see his potential - but then took to his role with pride and ability.

The meeting got dismissed, all the officers went out to work and they were finally left alone; thanks to Zarkon’s plans of invasion, it had been hard to have some time with his husband that didn’t include crowds of servants or the watchful eye of ministers.

“That went well,” Shiro said, taking Keith’s hand in his.

“I hope so. Our spies say the Galran are almost ready to come back.” Keith looked pained, his brow was furrowed and he kept looking at the map as if it held all the answers he was looking for.

Shiro leaned forward, pressing a kiss to his hair. “It’s going to be okay, whatever happens we will face it together.”

Keith finally smiled again, a wishful look in his eyes.

“Yes,” he agreed. “Together.”


End file.
